[gwern]

It was included because it was hilarious. The mental image of a worker ducking under a nozzle and their stomach bloating like some sort of ice cream mosquito justifies itself. (Watch out for the ice cream headache. That may not be covered under the health plan.)

However, I bet it's also a question he gets asked a lot by people: "do you ever just snack on some of the ice cream yourself?" And the reality squashing the dream would be no, that would be unsanitary, often infeasible given the mechanism and scale, and so on and so forth.

[Symbiote]

It was made clear to me when I worked in a food factory that if I ate anything, I'd be fired immediately.

The exception was when a low pressure hose popped open, and squirted food all over my face. The line manager, who has been fiddling with it, said "please swallow that!" as spitting it out would be been much worse. (Having to clean and discard a lot of stuff.)

Once a week or so there would be leftovers in the canteen.

[freedomben]

That seems so silly to me. Even all-you-can-eat doesn't seem like it would even make a dent. Even if they go nuts initially, people will get sick of it, and the Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility will lower demand.

Why not just be cool?

[Symbiote]

Nothing to do with costs; it's unhygenic.

It would be allowed to take food out of the factory area and eat it in the canteen, which is exactly what they did once a week or so. Returning from the canteen to the factory area required putting on different boots, clean overalls and a hairnet, then cleaning boots, arms and hands.

[aendruk]

I once lost track of a coworker at a coffee shop and eventually found her sitting on the floor under the bar spraying a tank of whipped cream into her mouth. It had been a long day.

[CaliforniaKarl]

Sending virtual hugs to your coworker!

[eru]

I guess she was following a keto diet.

[mp05]

Yeah whipped cream right out of the can was a thing I got into when doing keto back in the day.

[thsksbd]

Hydrogenated oil milk solids and sugar?

The only real cream in an aerosol can Ive ever seen was in Canada (it probably had sugar) Everything else is vegetable oil.

Which is weird, whipped cream is so easy and so delicious to make at home!

[eru]

> [...] spraying a tank of whipped cream into her mouth.

Because the original mentioned a 'tank' not a 'can', I assumed that original comment meant a restaurant grade whipped cream dispenser like eg https://www.amazon.sg/Otis-Classic-Stainless-Whipped-Dispens...

If you are fancy enough to use such a tank instead of a spray can, you would most likely load it with real cream, not sweetened vegetable oil.

(I don't know how likely sweetening of the cream in the tank is.)

[KennyBlanken]

Starbucks et al use counter-mounted hoses fed from giant tanks and I highly doubt it's remotely real cream.

[Symbiote]

Whipped cream is easy to make with a machine like that. You fill it with cream, and nitrogen dioxide bubbles through. Done.

They describe it as "whipped cream" in Europe, and there's no way they could do that if it wasn't. The alternative is "vegan whipped topping".

[huehehue]

They may have changed it / it varies by location, but when I worked there it was just heavy cream and a canister of compressed air.

[Reason077]

> ”The only real cream in an aerosol can Ive ever seen was in Canada”

Aerosol cream (“squirty cream”) is a fairly common product in most countries, in my experience. Usually sweetened with some additives and nitrous oxide propellant, but mostly made from real cream.

An example from the UK: https://www.sainsburys.co.uk/gol-ui/product/coffee-shop/anch...

[rootusrootus]

> Hydrogenated oil milk solids and sugar?

Is that really a thing? I can only speak for here in the US, but all the normal whipped-cream-in-a-can I've seen has cream as the first ingredient. Even Reddi-wip.